Great Action, Great FX!

Rating: 7/10 (28 July 2013)

Objectively speaking, this really was a good movie to watch. It came out of the gate with action and it immediately began laying the ground work for the story, which was pretty good and easy to follow. I like billed action movies that actually get right into the action without boring you with a bunch of dry back-story. Even this movie's back-story had a lot of action. Furthermore, the pace of the movie was good with only a minor lull here and there. Also, this movie did not make the mistake of doing what a lot of big budget films do which is to beat you over the head with bang, bang and then boom action.
Visually, the special effects were great and the action scenes were filmed in a way that was easy to follow and enjoy. No crazy extreme angles, or dizzying close-ups (Bourne ID Series). Most of the shots were filmed wide enough for you to enjoy the sweet visuals and none of that shaky hand-held camera (again, Bourne ID Series) crap that makes you dizzy and detracts from the frenetic action sequences. It seems the new thing is to have this "realistic" in-the-middle-of-the-action camera angle that's hand-held and is shaky as if some field reporter was catching the shot, but all it does is become a distraction and you find yourself reaching for a remote to rewind it so you can make sense of it. Not this movie. The scenes were scoped just right, well, most of them and the action drew you in at every engagement.
Personally, I found myself poking holes in the story and while I enjoyed the movie and it's awesome-ness..., I still sat there going, "Hmmm, I see..., and why?" For example; {ALERT: Spoiler} Twin operators: Why do you need two pilots again? Mind-melded through a neural interface with the robot? I mean, it was explained, but it still didn't make sense to me. Two pilots operate independent sides of the unit just as both hemispheres operate our bodies? Sooo, why did one of the robots have three pilots? And if you are jacked into the hardware through your brain...why do you still need tactile control surfaces and switch gear on multiple panels in the cockpit? Maybe in case the interface fails? Well, does that mean that you can operate these things without the mental connection? How do they keep from arguing? What if they disagree on a tactic? What if one wants to zig while the other wants to zag..., does the robot trip n' fall in confusion? The neural interface thing seemed to work well in say, Avatar..., here, not so much for me.
Larger-than-life robots seemed to be operated fine in every other version within the genre by one pilot, a CPU and good ole controls so why this radical departure. I'm not a man against change, just change that isn't plausible or doesn't make sense. Another thing that got me was Humanity's response to the invasion. Mankind was able to develop amazing technology in the advancement of biomechanical interfacing and also able to pool enormous amounts of resources and materials to construct the robots but scientists weren't able to figure out how to blow those monsters up from far away? I understand that nuking 'em would be mutually destructive but there are a lot of options between nuclear bombs and tank shells. After all, the monsters were easy targets because you always knew where they were going to appear; the pacific ocean. Lastly, a core meltdown? While sounding dramatic, a core meltdown does not actually result in a nuclear explosion.
Other than some other physics and plot holes I did enjoy the movie and I certainly would recommend going to see it on the big screen. It was fun to watch.